Andrew Sullivan And Classic Liberalism, Voxplained For Ezra Klein

…Unfortunately, when Andrew Sullivan almost seems sane, you know we’re crazy. Sullivan’s column, “America’s New Religions,” argues that science, art, history, and politics cannot replace religion as a source of meaning in our lives.

…Locke’s principles were transmitted to Americans by pre-Revolutionary
pastors. Thomas Jefferson took those principles to their logical
conclusion in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which extended freedom to all faiths.

Sullivan argued “this separation is vital for liberalism,” which
Klein overlooked and thus avoided a key aspect of Sullivan’s
argument. Lockean tolerance, based in Christianity, is also the
foundation of post-Enlightenment politics. Requiring tolerance in the
public square limits appeals to divine authority and deters dissent from
being conflated with and punished as heresy.

As Max Weber observed: “Politics is the art of compromise.” Religion,
generally speaking, is not. The devout do not compromise with evil.

Sullivan is not claiming that “Christianity lowers the stakes of
political conflict.” Rather, he is claiming the Lockean idea of
tolerance allows political conflict to replace (or separate from)
religious conflict in the philosophical sense.

Also, Sullivan is arguing (as he has before) that intersectionality is a religion. 

Andrew Sullivan And Classic Liberalism, Voxplained For Ezra Klein

Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man – in temperament, character, and capacity – and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.

Frank Chodorov

The French Dilemma

This
leads to the French dilemma. The middle class and working poor in
France want a better life for themselves and their children. But at the
same time, they (and French society in general) are resistant to
meaningful changes. Economic reform is something all French presidents
have attempted in recent years. None has been successful.

This
poses a paradox. If the above is true, why then is France as wealthy as
it is? After all, France has the third largest economy in the European
Union and ranks 20th in the world in terms of GDP. I would offer two
reasons to explain this. The first is that France is in the EU, and the
EU was designed to benefit France and Germany the most. (That being the
case, it is a mystery why Great Britain threw its lot in with the EU in
the first place, but that’s another story.)

The French Dilemma

It wasn’t martyrdom or altruism or anything as lovely as all that. I would simply be doing what was right for the third or fourth time in my life, and that was good. I realized how naive and unrealistic people are to think you can be both right and happy. If it happens that way, you are truly one of the blessed. Right, however, should win if you have to choose.

JONATHAN CARROLL, VOICE OF OUR SHADOW